Strictness of the Collapsible Pushdown Hierarchy

Abstract: We present a pumping lemma for each level of the collapsible pushdown graph hierarchy in analogy to the second author's pumping lemma for higher-order pushdown graphs (without collapse). Using this lemma, we give the first known examples that separate the levels of the collapsible pushdown graph hierarchy and of the collapsible pushdown tree hierarchy, i.e., the hierarchy of trees generated by higher-order recursion schemes. This confirms the open conjecture that higher orders allow one to generate more graphs and more trees.